An
alumnus of Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, he has over 10 years of
experience into multiple areas viz Education, Training, Project management, and
Business Consulting. He has created two successful ventures in education, the
first being www.genesismentors where he
was the founder and www.6piconsultants.com
where he is the Chairman and Managing Director. His previous work experience
includes Associate Director LBS-CEE and Manger (Project Management Office) at
HSBC GR. He is now onto his third and dream project www.dreamwallets.com, which is a crowd-funding
platform that they have created to truly democratize the fund-raising and
getting the early adapters for the product. He has also been designated the
city mayor for Pune chapter @http://www.entrepreneurcafe.org/
. He aims to connect with like-minded individuals and his goal is to develop
skill sets of the employable youth of India by providing them access to
education - soft and technical based.

Markathon: People have these misconception about crowd funding/crowd sourcing that it is only for money and it’s a last resort for them, what is your view on this?

Crowdfunding
is a disruptive funding model as it works on the ‘wisdom of the crowd’. What you have mentioned here is the most misplaced perception
about the wonderful vehicle of crowdfunding. In India, the markets are majorly
dominated by Reward based crowdfunding, wherein contributors are provided
value based Rewards. Rules and regulations around the other channels viz.
equity based crowdfunding and peer to peer lending are not very clear and
water-tight. An effective crowdfunding campaign not only raises the required
funds needed by the project creator but also generates validation of their
ideas. It has also been proven time and again that successful campaigns
improve the prospects for ideas and start-ups when they pitch for external
rounds of funding.

Markathon: How
difficult is it to promote your start-up given the budget constraints one has
to face at this level?

Promotion
is another massive challenge that start-ups and ideas face at the initial stage.
The ideas that come to www.dreamwallets.com receive
tremendous support from our digital reach inturn helping the projects gain wider
audience.

Talking
about www.dreamwallets.com, we have
been using innovative ways to enhance the brand identity. We helped various
national level innovation initiatives led by the respective state governments helping
us gain tremendous visibility. We have also managed to create an eco system wherein
we collaborate with potential multi-baggers.

Markathon: E-commerce
in India is in the growth phase while being the most active space for
start-ups. What do you think will be the next big idea to come out of this mix?

We are lucky to witness the E-commerce concepts taking shape
across India. With

widespread penetration of internet & access to
affordable technology they are transforming into mid to large sized
organization. However, I would like to caution the readers and start-up
enthusiasts against focusing too much on the ‘We want to become the UBER for X’
or ‘ We want to become the Flipkart for Y’.
It looks like a low hanging fruit but may not be the most nutritious or
tasty one.

Markathon: Big data is changing the way we do marketing. Where do you think
conventional marketing is headed and what is the scope of big data analytics in
the near-future?

Consumer
behavior has gained a new and enviable dimension. Transformation of consumption
habits, preferences, and aspirations are making the data analysis extremely
exciting.

50% of
marketing cost is always a waste. The irony is no one knows which 50% is the goes
gown the drain. Hopefully, putting more numbers around predicting consumer
behavior would bring more rationality and less of hitting in the dark mindset
for marketing professionals.

As the
professionals say, one can’t manage what one can’t measure!

Markathon: Analysis shows that 9 out of 10 start-ups fail to scale up. What
is that one successful start-up doing differently?

I would put this number to 99 out of 100. I always believe in a famous Gujarati saying.
If your business can survive for 1000 days from its launch, it will survive for
a very long time.

I meet a lot of start-ups on a regular basis. What I have realized
as checkpoints for most of them are:

An A grade team will be able to execute a B grade plan as well.
The converse is not true. If the team is a B grade one, they definitely have
the potential to screw up even an A grade plan.

Relentless efforts to avoid being stale and being ahead of the
curve. All the startups that have been agile have a higher propensity of being
successful.

There is
no golden rule of being successful. But avoiding basics such as the above one is
definitely a recipe for disaster.

Markathon: Is the idea the most integral component of a start-up? How
important is its implementation in today’s world?

Sam
Altaman of www.ycombinator.com has
mentioned about four aspects of creating a successful start-up. A start-up
success is a function of four areas viz. Idea, Product, Team, and Execution. As
you observed Idea is just one of them.

Infact, these
factors work on multiplier of concepts & not as simply additive. Hence, if
there is negligence on only one aspect, it may make the whole equation
insignificant. In the current scenario, there is also the fifth parameter to
these four above. “Luck” – or as we commonly know it, “Funding”.

To answer
the second part of the question, Execution or implementation is surely one of
the most important aspect and this is an area that we tend to ignore the most.
An idea can get you just this far. Relentless pursuit is the way to go for a
success in any field.

Markathon: Your take
on Start-up India and other similar initiatives being taken by the government?

The present government is boosting the spirit of entrepreneurship
by way small booster packages. Consider for example releasing a corpse of Rs.
1000 crore managed by the Industrial professionals. The validation of ideas and guarantee against risks, these are the two major themes
on which the authorities are framing regulations.

We are hopeful that more and more startups will harness these supportive
policies.

Markathon: What advice would you like to give to our readers especially those
who want to start their own venture but are apprehensive in taking the first
step?

Go for a market that might be small
presently but is growing at a better pace, rather than investing in a market
that is relatively big but is growing slowly.
For example , Restaurant or In-dining industry is over a Trillion Dollar
Industry but is saturating faster viz-a-viz Food Delivery aggregator has
started gaining market share with more and more service oriented families.

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About Markathon

Launched in April 2009, Markathon is the monthly Marketing magazine released by the Marketing Club of IIM Shillong and was the brainchild of Asit Jain, Saurav Bagchi, Dilpreet Singh, Ritul Singh, Pranab Talukdar & Soumyasanta Roy. The current office bearers are Ashok A, Kamalpreet Saluja, Pallavi, Prateek Gaurav, Shashank Singh Tomar, Sushree Tripathy, Swikruti Panda and Vaibhav Annam. This is the first monthly B-School marketing magazine which is circulated in over 50 B-Schools in India and abroad and has a reader base of over 5000. Made available in a free-to-distribute electronic format, it includes articles which cover a plethora of marketing topics and also has an ad designing competition. Markathon aims to deconstruct marketing jargons to make the subject more accessible to students. Interviews of corporate and academic stalwarts is a regular feature. The issues are characterized by rich images, detailed styling and the cover pages are especially remarkable and lend identity to the whole issue.